When my wife and I moved to Maryland, I took advantage of my company's (Sun Microsystems) Work From Home program. I use the office in my house as my primary work place. It's great for me. Traffic in the morning is passing my 7 year old son on the stairs, and lunch and meeting breaks give me time to play with my 9 month old son. It's a great break during a stressful day.

With all these benefits, I usually loathe having to go into the actual office. It's a nice office, really, located in a town about 20 minutes from my house - a direct shot via highway. I love the folks in the office, but there's really no motivation to go in to sit in a check out office and do the same thing (sit on conference calls, work on projects) as I could do at home. Yesterday, however, I had to 1) Pick up two packages from the office, 2) Get more expense reimbursement envelopes, and 3) Copy about 2 dozen pages worth of stuff. Enough things that pretty much added up to, "James, you need to go to the office."

What a day to drive into the office. I started off at 7:45a. It was a wonderful 72 degrees, fairly low humidity (for Maryland at this time of the year anyways), light breeze. Put the top down on the Mini Cooper S. Cranked up the iPod. Ahhhhh.....

I started off first driving 20 miles in the opposite direction. Had to deliver my wife's bag to her office (she accidentally left it at home). Almost no traffic. Very few trucks (trucks are intimidating in a convertible to begin with - compound that with the small stature of the Mini and it's really an experience....). Perfect temperature. No one cut me off on the road. It took me about 25 minutes to cover the 20 miles.

I quickly dropped the bag off, hopped back in the car, and headed up to my office, now approximately 35 miles away. Again, everything was great - no traffic, perfect temperature, pulled into a nice space in the parking garage in 35 minutes. Turned off the engine and sat for a moment and thought, "What a great way to start off the day - a one hour cruise in the Mini with the top down at true motoring speed." I grabbed my laptop bag and headed into the office with a smile on my face.

Could only have been made better if I had commuted in via scenic Highway 1 on the California coast instead of Maryland State Highway...but I won't complain.